Trump got it wrong again. His Asia tour was no success

US President Trump has, in his narcissistic way, declared that his recent Asia tour has been a stupendous success. The excursion has many facets worth exploring. From the point of view of American business, it most certainly has been a great success. The US has announced that some $253 billion (Rs 16,42,982 crore) worth of trade deals were arrived at in China. There is, of course, the view that Beijing played Washington well in the process.

In fact, when you do the maths, it is apparent that the tour served to put a stamp of legitimacy on China’s status as a Pacific power. Chinese President Xi Jinping made it a point to tell Trump that “the Pacific Ocean is big enough to accommodate China and the United States”.

Chinese whispers

In the past year, since the South China Sea arbitration award and the Belt and Road Forum, we have seen a distinct incoherence in American policy and a subtle shift in the region’s approach towards Beijing. Many of them, especially ASEAN nations are adapting to China’s power; even feisty Singapore has been forced to kowtow to Beijing.

The US allies were broadly happy that Trump strongly stated American intentions of upholding its security commitments to the region. His tour took him to Japan, South Korea, Vietnam and the Philippines, besides China. He also articulated a new Indo-Pacific strategy and the US working to revive the Quadrilateral Security dialogue.

But by walking out of the trans-Pacific partnership, the Americans knocked off a key leg of their Asia-Pacific or, Indo-Pacific strategy. The President says he wants to do bilateral deals, as though little Vietnam or the Philippines would risk underrating such a negotiation with the mighty US. Smaller powers have always banded together in such agreements to protect and further their interests. So, there are no takers for the offer.

Smaller powers are therefore acting on their own to increase Asian connectivity and balance against China. The TPP countries ranging from Australia to Vietnam have begun talks to revive a variant of the organisation minus the US, which they hope the US will join once it comes to its senses. Minus Cambodia and Laos, states in Asia are concerned about the “America First” agenda, especially its withdrawal from multilateral positions on trade and climate change.

Lack of strategy

The US appears to lack a coherent strategy for the Asian region. Reaffirming military commitments, even while undermining economic ones is not a credible response to Beijing, which through its Belt and Road Initiative, is riding on its vast capital resources and working systematically to knit together a web of influence through infrastructure construction, trade and investment.

The PLA flag follows this and its manifestation is the far-flung base in Djibouti and the PLAN ships and submarines that now regularly visit the Indian Ocean. This is the reason why India needs to exercise caution while getting involved in Trump’s revived Quad and his Indo-Pacific construct.

The idea is clearly aimed at drawing India into the Pacific military equation. Among Asia-Pacific countries, only India has the potential to effectively balance China. Japan is a formidable military power, but it is locked in an existential struggle with North Korea, Australia is inconsequential as far as China is concerned and Vietnam too vulnerable, physically and economically

The one thing instantly evident about the Indo-Pacific construct is that there is a lot of Pacific in it, and little of the “Indo”. The main reason for this is that Indo-US ties have strong military content and are supervised by the US Pacific Command, whose geographical jurisdiction ends at Diego Garcia, south of Sri Lanka. The area that matters most to India — the Persian Gulf and Arabian Sea — has been excluded from any Indo-US discussion.

Complex politics

This, as is well known, is a vastly more important external region for India as compared to the Pacific. This also happens to be a politically volatile region. Of course, it is not simple to navigate through the complex regional politics. India, for example, has good ties with Iran, while the US sees it as an adversary.

Likewise, the US has historically had excellent ties with Islamabad, while New Delhi sees it as an enemy. These are only some of the equations that need to get untangled before we can talk about a comprehensive and joint “Indo-Pacific” strategy.

India certainly needs close ties with the US to offset growing Chinese power, especially since its own economy has yet to take off and its military remains unreconstructed and obsolete. But it needs to ensure that there be some balance in the Indo-Pacific obligations.

Given the shifting dynamics of this vast region, it is not as though the two sides have to dot every i and cross every t to begin with. But they need to recognise that for a durable and workable partnership they need to be upfront about their respective medium to long-term calculations.

Mail Today, November 20, 2017

Why India Should Be Wary of the Quad

Like it or not, the term ‘Indo Pacific’ seems to be a means of including India in the military calculations of US strategy in the Pacific.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi with US President Donald Trump, Japanese Prime Shinzo Abe and other world leaders at an ASEAN Summit dinner in Manila on Sunday. Credit: PTI

The second coming of the Quadrilateral alliance of the US, Australia, Japan and India to confront China in the Asia-Pacific may not be the proverbial farce, but it is close enough.

The first time around it collapsed when two of its members found it inconvenient to go ahead. And now, after a decade, in which China has militarily consolidated itself in the very region that the Quad had hoped to challenge, the chimera is once again being chased.

Mooted as an alliance of democracies, it seeks to upend everything we know about international relations, where the drivers are national interests, rather than values. Even that titanic struggle against evil in World War II, pitted a partial democracy (the US), an empire (the UK) and the communist Soviet Union against the Nazis and the Japanese militarists.

Ordinarily this would not matter much since the Quad would largely be a talking shop with some joint naval exercises thrown in. But parallel to this, US President Donald Trump and his Secretary of State Rex Tillerson have drawn up an overarching vision of the policy they have in mind to replace the now abandoned “pivot.” They are pointedly wooing New Delhi into what could well be a military alliance. Trump’s effusive remarks about India and the pointed re-christening of the Asia-Pacific region as the Indo-Pacific are the soft sell. Like it or not, or hide it or not, the term now seems to be a means of including India in the military calculations of US strategy in the Pacific.

In Manila for the ASEAN anniversary and East Asia summits, the leaders of the four countries met each other individually while their officials will convene separately as the Quad. Clearly, there is some amount of caution in not provoking a hostile response from Beijing, whose response has actually been fairly mild. Following the meeting of officials, the Indian foreign ministry spokesman said that “a free open, prosperous and inclusive Indo-Pacific region serves the long-term interests of all countries in the region and the world at large.” But some nuances were visible as the Indian statement avoided mention of the North Korea issue, while the US, Australian and Japanese ones focused on it.

It was during Tillerson’s visit to India on October 25-26, that Alice Wells, the acting assistant secretary of state for South Asia, told accompanying reporters that Washington was “looking at a working level quadrilateral meeting in the near term.” The idea was to bring together countries that share the same values “to reinforce those values in the global architecture.” She, of course, denied that the idea was aimed at China, through she did say that it would “coordinate” efforts of countries seeking infrastructural development through means that “don’t include predatory financing or unsustainable debt (read: China’s Belt and Road Initiative).

A couple of days earlier, Japan’s foreign minister Taro Kono, had proposed reviving the forum, something he said he had discussed with Tillerson and his Australian counterpart Julie Bishop at the sidelines of a meeting in Manila in August. The purpose of the idea, Kono said, was to seek a peaceful maritime zone from Asia to Africa. Essentially, it meant the introduction of Australia into the US-Japan-India trilateral, which has been functioning for a while.

Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe first pushed the idea in 2005 with a view to developing a broad front to balance China shortly after first coming to power that year. When anti-Japanese demonstrations hit China in 2004-5, Tokyo was shocked. It had for long assumed that Chinese animosity towards Japan for its World War II atrocities had been smoothened by the substantial economic aid that Japan had given China in the 1980s and 1990s, and the massive trade between the two. But the Chinese had merely been biding their time.

As for the US, it first mooted the “pivot to Asia” strategy to rebalance 60% of its naval assets to the region. It sought to buttress this with the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP). Despite initiating the move to re-establish the Quad and change the nomenclature of Asia Pacific to “Indo Pacific” it’s not quite clear how Trump will operationalise his policy. Would it mean a more muscular set of freedom of navigation operations (FONOPS) in the South China Sea? And how would it differ from Obama’s pivot, which has already been undercut by the US abandonment of the TPP?

India was leery of the Quad the first time around, but now it says it would be ready to discuss the new terms of engagement for a revival of the proposal. This time around, the Japanese, invigourated by the victory of Abe in the recent elections, have said they would take the initiative to promote substantive cooperation between the countries in defence, maritime security and infrastructure development. Tillerson has also indicated that the Quad would also seek to promote a rival project of connectivity and infrastructure development that would not be predatory and unsustainable.

The first Quad foundered as Australia peremptorily walked out and India followed suit. This was coincidentally around the time of the 2007-2008 economic crisis that saw Chinese economic power go up several notches and the initiation of a phase of military assertion by the Chinese across the board – in the Senkaku islands and on the Sino-Indian border.

At the public level, everyone says that China is too big to be contained. But that cannot negate the nature of international politics, which is based on maximising national, rather than collective gain, and the relentless pursuit of national interest without any special regard to values and principles. No matter what Japan, India, the US and Australia say, the name of the game today is containing China. There is nothing particularly sinister about this. China has not shown itself to be a power that is peaceful or restrained. It has taken recourse to threats and bullying at the drop of the hat. Note the manner in which it sought to browbeat Bhutan on the Doklam issue, penalised South Korea for deploying the THAAD and pushed South-East Asian nations on the basis of its nine -dash line maritime boundary, which has no basis in international law.

The question is whether the Quad process is based on an honest assessment of the challenge, and an equally honest commitment of all those involved. Australia’s history is well known. In the late 1980s, when Prime Minister Paul Keating was asked who he would side with in the event of a Japan-US trade war, he said Japan. Given the country’s economic profile, it is not surprising that he said so, but the same logic holds for the country’s trade with China. Australia is much more economically dependent on China than the other three countries of the Quad. As for Japan, it still has a significant “peace” constituency which could very easily change course once Abe is gone.

In many ways, India and Japan are the frontline where China is concerned, but would a Quad mean that they would support each other militarily were their respective disputes heat up? Actually, it is difficult to see Japan removing its eye from the issues in the East China Sea and the Sea of Japan.

And what about the US? For all its talk of the “Indo-Pacific”, it refuses to associate with India on issues relating to the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf, two of the most important external areas for India. Shorn of the rhetoric, Indo-Pacific merely means an Indian military commitment to the US-led alliances in the Pacific Ocean. There is no reciprocal US commitment to issues of Indian concern relating to Pakistan and the dangers arising out of the highly volatile environment in the Persian Gulf area which the US has helped create.

There is a broader issue here as well. Where the US seems to have lost its vision in the mindlessness of “America First”, China has categorically laid out its ambitions for the next 30 years. By 2035, it aims to become a global innovation leader and remove poverty totally from the country, and by 2050, an overall global leader and “a great modern socialist country.” For this, China has laid out a grand plan that it is pursuing and is offering its model of a single-party authoritarian state as against the multi-party liberal democratic model which, to go by the experiences of the UK and US, is clearly faltering.

The only power that can effectively balance China is the US and the world can’t be sure where it’s headed. Even with its great endowments and abilities, the current situation in the US does not generate much confidence. Unlike the seemingly united and aggressive posture that China is taking, there is an intense and almost violent conflict of ideas within the US about who and what America is all about. In such circumstances, it would be hazardous to depend on the US for an effective leadership of the coalition needed to balance China.

November 13, 2017

China on top? Xi unveils soaring ambition of making China the centre of the world

Given China’s closed system, you can interpret the outcome of the recent 19thCongress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in multiple and sometimes contradictory ways.

Some say that the new leadership is carefully balanced between various factions, others that Xi, the Chairman of Everything, is supreme, with his “Thoughts on Socialism with Chinese characteristics for a New Era” bringing him on par with Mao. Has Xi emerged as the new Emperor, or is his goal shoring up CPC’s supremacy? But one thing has come out clearly, the soaring ambition of making China the centre of the world. So we need to pay attention to the outcome of the meeting.

Xi, who was flanked at the Party Congress by his predecessors Hu Jintao and Jiang Zemin, clearly has the support of the mainstream of the party whose members know they must hang together, if they are not to hang separately. The one dissonance is that there are no 1960s born leaders in the lineup of the 7-member apex ruling body, the Politburo Standing Committee (PSC). In other words, no clear successor to Xi when he is supposed to retire in 2022. Recall, Xi, who became general secretary at the 18th Party Congress, was appointed to the PSC in the 17th, his predecessor Hu Jintao was put into that committee at the 14th Congress, even though he took office in the 16th.

Continuity has been personified by the elevation of Wang Huning to the PSC. Wang, a former law professor, has little experience in administration. He is a theoretician who has formulated the ideas of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, Xi’s predecessors. He is the man shaping CPC’s ideas and messaging, suggesting that China is creating a Sinicized form of Marxism-Leninism which combines an authoritarian political system with a market economy, layered over with a generous dose of nationalism.

The second major issue is that China intends to come to the centre of the world stage. To this end China has outlined a path to enhance its economy by harnessing technology and innovation with artificial intelligence on one hand, and expanding its economic reach abroad through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

China is singularly favoured at this moment by the self-defeating leadership of the United States. When Washington has signalled retreat from multi-lateralism and globalisation, Beijing has signalled its desire to take the lead on matters like climate change and trade. It is also rapidly developing its military capabilities to assume a larger role outside its own borders. Simultaneously, it has sought to tighten its authority over Hong Kong and assert its Taiwan claim emphasising its intention to strongly protect its national interests.

There is now an explicit challenge to the world order which was led by Washington. China has benefited hugely from this world order and has no intention of upending it; what it seeks is to slowly supplant the US. But where the US-led order emphasised liberal values and democracy, China insists that its illiberal ways work better, a message that resonates well in many parts of the developing world.

This said, it needs to be noted that China’s problems are also daunting – massive debt, growing inequality, an ageing population, a polluted landscape. The Party has, in its arcane Marxist-Leninist jargon, altered its understanding of the principal contradiction facing China says it will now seek to address issues arising from the persistence of poverty, regional imbalance and a poisoned environment.

CPC has brought unprecedented prosperity to the country and it is not easy for it to digest that its policies may be wrong or require correction, and its authoritarian and centralised structure often prevents effective feedback. So far CPC has shown an impressive ability to surmount challenges as they have emerged. But the obstacles of the future look even more daunting, especially when you put them in the context of the ambitions of Xi Jinping.

Times of India, November 11, 2017

India's fight against terrorism hindered by United Nations' 'talk shop' and Modi's 'megaphone diplomacy'

Going by India's rhetoric, one would imagine it was leading the fight against international terrorism. Yet, when push comes to shove, the only weapon visible in the GoI's armoury appears to be that futile talk shop called the United Nations.

The Prime Minister and his diplomats go around the world demanding that Pakistan be sanctioned as a state supporting terrorism and the global community must unite to pass a Comprehensive Convention on International Terrorism (CCIT).

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Hafiz Saeed, leader of the banned organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD), speaks during a protest

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India, of course, has studiously avoided declaring Pakistan a state sponsor of terror itself. It wants the US and others to do that.

Indeed, earlier this year, the Union Home Ministry said 'it will not be prudent to declare any country a terror state.'

Little effort

Likewise, India has done little to deal with terrorists like Hafiz Muhammad Saeed and Masood Azhar directly, but it is happy if they are designated in the UN list under the 1267 Committee.

In line with this, it was not surprising that the Indian media, reflecting the Modi government's stand, once again went ballistic over China blocking Masood Azhar from being designated by the 1267 Committee.

Actually, by itself, a designation by the Committee means little.

First, the designation is not about listing 'terrorists', but individuals and entities who aid the ISIL and al-Qaeda.

Just how much it has been misused is apparent from the fact that when it began, it listed all Taliban notables, but has now shifted them to another list because of the need to negotiate with the entity.

All designations are inherently political and not criteria based. In any case, the UN has yet to define what terrorism is.

Secondly, a designation under the Committee list does not do much for hardened terrorists.

All that happens is: a) their assets are to be frozen; b) states are called on to ban their entry or transit; c) no arms can be sold to them.

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Activists from Jamaat-ud- Dawa Pakistan wave flags at a rally in Karachi

States are not asked to detain them or punish them in any other way. The 1267 list is mere tokenism as is obvious from the experience of Lashkar-e-Tayyiba chief Hafiz Muhammad Saeed, who was put on the list in December 2008 in the wake of the Mumbai attack.

Barring some showcase periods of house arrest, little has happened to him.

People like Saeed and Azhar do not have to own property and neither would they be foolish enough to travel abroad.

Two UNSC lists

At present, the UN Security Council maintains two lists, one a consolidated 166-page list which includes the North Koreans, Houthi insurgents, Taliban officials, and a grab bag of terrorists, arms smugglers, drug kingpins, money changers and terror funders.

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Lashkar-e-Toiba and Pakistan flags held in Kashmir during a 'Martyrdom Week' rally 

The other 68-page list focusses on al-Qaeda and ISIL. This is where one can find the names of Hafiz Saeed, and top leaders of LeT, Jaish-e-Muhammad and Harkat-ul-Jihad Islami, along with ISIL and al-Qaeda notables.

The Security Council Resolution 1267 set up a Committee that originally called on the Taliban to obey the UN Security Council in turning over Osama bin Laden, and called on states to prevent their territory from being used for Taliban, froze its resources, and set up a committee to monitor the tasks.

Subsequent resolutions expanded its scope and authority to the point that it has become meaningless and seems important only to the government of India to score points against Pakistan and China.

Actually, there is more to the Modi government's stand than meets the eye. Instead of behind-the-scenes diplomacy which is usually adopted to seek listings, India has taken recourse to megaphone diplomacy which seems aimed more at embarrassing China than anything else.

Tough nut China

But China is a hard case and is not likely to react to such pressures. The question that needs to be asked is: Just why is the government so keen to put China off balance diplomatically.

In any case, whatever it is doing is hardly likely to lead to any significant results. The Jaish-e-Muhammad is already on the list as of 2001 and is none the worse for it. 

Dealing with terrorism and terrorists requires a strategy of pre-emption through good intelligence, resilience in the face of terrorist attacks and deterrence through resolute counter-terrorist action.

Listing terrorists by a UN committee may have its place in the corridors of the UN headquarters, but in the hard-scrabble world of the fight against terrorism, only one thing matters — the ability to take them out physically, just as the US did with Osama Bin Laden and Anwar al Awlaki and scores of others.

Mail Today November 5, 2017

To resolve the problem in Kashmir, Indian state must first acknowledge the suffering of its people

After a year of hammering the separatists in Jammu and Kashmir – killing more than 160 militants in targeted operations in 2017 alone and arresting at least 10 overground separatist leaders for their role in suspicious financial transactions – the Indian government is seeking to apply a balm. These are fairly standard tactics, but will they work?

The answer depends on many factors, primarily the character of the movement.

As of now, it is not clear what exactly Dineshwar Sharma’s role is in Jammu and Kashmir. Union minister Jitendra Singh pointedly said Sharma was not an interlocutor but merely “a special representative” of the government. Indeed, the October 24 notification appointing him described Sharma as a “representative of the government of India” whose task was to “carry forward the dialogue” with elected representatives, various organisations and individuals. The day before, Home Minister Rajnath Singh spoke of Sharma as a “special representative” who would “have full freedom to engage in talks with anyone he likes”.

At one level, it doesn’t really matter. “Interlocutor” was a word of convenience that fitted in the diverse collection of individuals and groups who have sought to work outside formal government structures to suggest solutions for the Kashmir problem. The way the government works, it does not really have to listen to anything such interlocutors tell it. Their role is strictly recommendatory and facilitative.

For the record, there has been no dearth of interlocutors who were interested in promoting a political solution to the issues roiling Kashmir and who had access to the highest levels of government. Some were self-appointed well meaning folk, others informally asked to do the needful, yet others who were formally appointed and laid out their recommendations in formal reports. The Jammu and Kashmir legislature, too, added its bit by examining the issue of autonomy and sending its recommendations to Delhi in 2000, only to have them rejected peremptorily.

All had one thing in common – they were not the Government of India. At the end of the day, only the central government has the authority to take decisions on such matters. Yet, despite years and decades of reports, recommendations, cogitation, the government has not spelt out what it is willing to offer. True, there have been statements by prime ministers that the “sky is the limit” when it comes to autonomy, or that the issue needs to resolved within the ambit of insaniyat, or humanity. Most recently, Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared that Kashmir’s problems could not be resolved by bullets but “only by embracing its people”. But these are rhetorical statements that give no clues as to the Union Government’s bottom line.

Emphasise reconciliation

So what can we expect now? A great deal depends on what Modi wants. If the government has appointed Sharma to arrange the surrender of the separatist movement, nothing will happen. The Kashmiri insurgency is now nearly three decades old, having taken the lives of some 45,000 people, roughly half of them militants, 14,000 civilians and some 6,000 security personnel. The way the government sees it probably is that its policy of relentless police action and attrition has brought the militancy to its knees, and this is the best moment to step in with an offer of political dialogue. It is possible that the movement can be brought to a point of exhaustion by relentless police action. But it is like a fire where even embers can give life to a dying blaze if there is sufficient combustible material around.

So, parse that another way and one could argue that having been willing to shed so much blood, Kashmiris will not accept a settlement that offers them nothing more than status quo ante as of January 1, 1990.

In the government’s reckoning, it is really unemployed youth and the internet that is causing the problem and so if jobs can be assured and the internet kept in check, things will work out. Things are not that simple. Historically, Kashmiris buttressed by geography, have had a sense of their uniqueness. The circumstances of their accession and the commitment of a plebiscite made by India and endorsed by the United Nations remain. No country in the world recognises Jammu and Kashmir to be a part of India; all see it as disputed territory, including our big friend the United States.

Not many in India realise that the counter-insurgency in Jammu and Kashmir has been brutal. Extra-judicial killings, torture and intimidation have been its constant features. And this for the last 30 years. So, on one hand, you have a hardened population and, on the other, an embittered one. Therefore, the political effort that you initiate must be thought through. Empty gestures are not going to mean much. Neither will they achieve the end you have in mind – the normalisation of the situation.

What needs to be adopted is a perspective that emphasises reconciliation. That’s a carefully chosen word. A brutal struggle has gone on in Kashmir for the past 30 years. To wish it away or to pretend it did not happen is to live in an imaginary world. The more honourable and pragmatic path is to accept that things happened and are happening, and that there is a need to overcome them through the process of dialogue, negotiation and compromise. The alternative is repeated cycles of violence and alienation, with fits of political intervention that will not really get you anywhere.

The Scroll November 3, 2017

What the BJP-Chidambaram Spat Tells Us About Modi’s Plans for Jammu and Kashmir

The movement for ‘azadi’ – which Chidambaram rightly said was more about restoring autonomy than independence – is driven by the fact that many in Kashmir feel their political space constrained by Delhi.

Former home minister P. Chidambaram (left), Prime Minister Narendra Modi (right). Credit: PTI

Prime Minister Narendra Modi can be excused for harshly criticising former Union home minister P. Chidambaram for saying that when the people of Jammu and Kashmir talk of “azadi”, they actually seek autonomy. Modi is in election mode and is not known to be a particularly restrained person when it comes to politics. He chastised Chidambaram for “using the same language that separatists use in Kashmir and the same language used in Pakistan”. Modi then, somewhat immoderately, proceeded to wrap the flag around himself by declaring that Chidambaram’s remarks “were an insult to our brave soldiers” and arose from the Congress’s jealousy over the surgical strikes.

All this is coming from a prime minister who, after a year-long crackdown by the security forces in Jammu and Kashmir, has decided to appoint former Intelligence Bureau chief Dineshwar Sharma to find a political solution to the issue. It also comes from a prime minister who has signed a “framework agreement” with India’s longest run separatist insurgency – that of the Nagas – and may be close to working out a final deal with them. It is difficult to believe that the government of India will be able to work out an agreement with the Nagas without in some way addressing the issue of sovereignty. Howsoever they finesse it, it will call for more, rather than less, autonomy for the areas in which the Nagas reside.

So, why is Modi dead set against any kind of autonomy for Jammu and Kashmir, notwithstanding the fact that these rights flow from Article 370 of the constitution? Well, for one, he is the leader of a party that has a well-known position of wanting to delete this provision from the constitution.

This is an inheritance from the political progenitor of the BJP, the Jammu and Kashmir Praja Parishad, which began spearheading an agitation for full integration of the state to the Indian Union. Indeed, when the Bharatiya Jana Sangh was formed in October 1951 under the auspices of the RSS and Syama Prasad Mookerjee, the Praja Parishad became its affiliate in Jammu, though it only merged into the Jana Sangh in 1963. In 1953, Mookerjee led a renewed agitation in Jammu and Kashmir and died in detention. For the Jana Sangh and its descendants, this was an act of martyrdom. This has strongly coloured the views of the BJP towards any form of autonomy to Jammu and Kashmir.

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Also read: The History of Dialogue in Kashmir Does Not Inspire Confidence in Delhi’s Latest Move

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Article 370 was a solemn commitment of the government of India to the Kashmiris and it arose out of the special circumstances that confronted the Constituent Assembly as it wrote the Indian constitution in 1948. One-third of the state was under the occupation of Pakistan, and the United Nations Security Council had passed a resolution suggesting that accession of the state to the Indian Union needed to be ratified through a plebiscite.

So, the Constituent Assembly incorporated a “temporary” Article 370 conferring special status to the state. This meant the inclusion of a provision limiting the jurisdiction of the Union government over the state. For this reason, the Article has been called a bridge that links the state to India. Over time, circumstances and politics have eroded much of the autonomy Jammu and Kashmir once enjoyed. Some of the developments have been natural, arising out of political developments and a better understanding of the governance needs of the country which has only taken its present shape in the past 70 years. There are many institutions, for example the higher courts system, the RBI or the Central Election Commission, whose all-India character have been a boon rather than a bane even for the Valley.

Yet, the fact of the matter is that a significant section of the people of Jammu and Kashmir feel that their political and cultural space is somehow being constrained by New Delhi. This is what drives the movement for “azadi” which Chidambaram rightly said was more about restoring autonomy, rather than independence.

Unfortunately, the demand for autonomy has not played out only politically. Aided and abetted by Islamabad, the state saw the start of a virulent insurgency in 1990. The fact that Muslims form the majority of the state complicated the issue because it came with a deliberate Pakistani strategy of trying to link it to the wider currents of jihadi Islam.

Tens of thousands of people were killed in the process. But in the end, the Indian state decisively defeated the gun. Having done so, it needs to move towards normalising the situation through political negotiation. Since a lot of the appeal of azadi is about a sentiment, rather than reality, what is needed is sensitive handling and creativity. But the loud clamour coming out of Jammu, demanding the abrogation of Article 370 – or 35A –  undermines this possibility.

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That New Delhi needs to address this sentiment may appear to be a simple task, but actually it is so much more complicated. Sentiment is what makes Brexit or the Catalonian developments so vexingly difficult to deal with.

When the BJP and the PDP formed a coalition to run the J&K government in 2015, it was an extraordinary moment. The former vehemently opposes autonomy and the latter equally passionately supports it. Both sides hold long established positions and it should have been their unique responsibility to work out a solution. Unfortunately, they have chosen to separately converse with New Delhi, rather than with each other.

The Union government has always had a special responsibility to work out ways of resolving such issues. But perhaps the BJP needs to pressure its state unit, rather than be buffeted by pressures from them. By now all of them – the BJP Jammu unit, the PDP and the Union government – should have realised the huge opportunity costs that the state of Jammu and Kashmir has paid for this continuing political division.

Modi spoke about the army, surgical strikes and the like. Perhaps a more sober approach would have been to acknowledge that through their hard work, the security forces have defeated the insurgents, and the best tribute that can be paid to the memory of those who have laid down their lives in the process is for the politicians to use the enormous authority entrusted to them to work out a durable political solution.

Indian federalism remains a work in progress. Too many things are still run out of Delhi, rather than being left to the states or even the districts of the country. The fact that this country has defeated every separatist challenge it has faced since 1947 should make the Union government more, rather than less, inclined towards promoting decentralisation and autonomy to all parts of the country. Diversity is India’s special gift and if nurtured it could well prove to be the well-spring of good governance and prosperity.

The Wire October 30, 2017